


Hello, Brooklyn

by aintweproudriff



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Dorks in Love, First Kiss, Jack is a bad wingman, M/M, Medda's theater, emo songs make good song titles whoops, they won't say they're in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 10:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: "This city is so pretty.Under moonlit skies we'll be hanging like a cigarette.So stunning. Start runnin'.Tonight's like a knife would you cut me with your kiss?"Prompt: Race and Spot are hanging out with Jack, and Jack says something about how cute they’d be together, but Spot shuts that down immediately, not knowing how Race feels.





	Hello, Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> this is such a good prompt and so fun to write after I've had a hard day!

Wind whipped at their faces in the dark, freezing their noses and turning their cheeks bright red. Streetlights lit up the silhouettes of three boys in the dark, walking with dulled purpose, towards something. A passerby might have assumed it’d be home, a friend would have known it was safer than that. These were boys who had their shoulders slumped downwards, their hands in their coat pockets, but their mouths open with silent laughter. 

“Jack,” Race chuckled lowly, “you asked him out how?”

“It was so bad, oh my god,” laughed a shorter boy, “I wish I hadn’t had to see it.”

Jack lifted his head up, letting himself be blown back by the wind. “You know what? Shut up,” he shook his head and began his story. “I went up to him, because he was like, the most adorable person I’d ever seen. And I promise I had a good pickup line somewhere in my head, but the second I started talking to him, it left me. So what I actually ended up saying was something like: ‘uh, um, I think you’re really cute, what’s your favorite color?’ And he said yellow, and internally I was thinking about how much the color yellow annoys me. But what I said was, ‘me too! Guess we’re soulmates.’”

“Jack Kelly I swear to fucking god.”

“It did the job though, didn’t it Spot?” Jack turned his head to the boy on his right. “He thought it was cute!” 

“I guess. You got really lucky though,” Spot rolled his eyes. “You’re lucky Crutchie’s almost as big of a dork as you are.”

Jack stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and fished a small key out of the pocket of his denim jacket. He unlocked the huge wooden door in front of him and turned the handle. “Don’t talk shit about Crutchie, man,” he warned teasingly, “he’ll kick your ass.”

Race was the only one who laughed. “Oh come on,” he argued at the other’s stoic silences, walking through the door. “I haven’t met him yet, but the kid’s name is Crutchie. How threatening could he be?”

Spot followed him into the room, raising his eyebrows. “No, that’s true,” he nodded seriously. “That guy’s tough.”

“I’ll believe you,” Race conceded, “but I’m not sure.”

The door slammed closed behind the boys, and they took in the sight of the old theater. They’d spent days in here when they were young, running around the lobby and jumping over chairs to propel themselves onto the stage. Jack flipped on a light and stepped over a piece of trash. The building had been empty for a few months now, but now that Medda had the money to keep putting on productions, it needed to be cleaned up, dusted off, and put back in working order. It still felt like home though, especially when they noticed how the yellow light from the chandelier still shone on the ticket desk, and the way the open room welcomed this in like Medda used to.

“You guys’ve gotta just be jealous, right?” Jack asked, a smile playing on his lips. 

“I’m not jealous, Jack,” Race laughed. 

“Yeah,” Spot pushed him as they walked through the big lobby, “why would we be jealous of you, of all people?”

“I don’t know,” he bounced his head from side to side playfully. “I just figured, you know, I’m in a relationship now, and neither of you are. And like, it’s been a few years since either of you have been in a relationship, right?” 

Spot and Race stayed silent, and followed Jack up the old wooden stairs that led to the mezzanine floor. 

“No, seriously,” Jack continued. “When’s the last time you guys had boyfriends? It’s been a long-ass time.”

“Yeah, so what?” Spot scoffed. “Doesn’t mean anythin’.”

“No, no, I know it doesn’t,” Jack held his hands out in front of him. “But like, do you guys have backup plans?”he gasped, turning around on his heel. “Or are you each other’s backup plans?” 

“Backup plans?” Race mocked Jack’s tone of voice. “I sure don’t need a backup plan. Do you need a backup plan, Spot?”

“I don’t need a backup plan.”

Jack shrugged and kept working. “Alright, guys,” he began to pull tarps off of the chairs in the balcony, working from the back to the front. The other two began doing the same. “But I’m just saying that I think you guys could totally get married if this whole thing with dating other guys doesn’t work out. You two would be pretty great together. Like Crutchie and me, we’re super different, and that’s why we work, right? And Katherine and Sarah, they’re really different personalities, right? They work probably the best of any couple. Elmer and Albert are like that too. But you guys, you’re like, the same. And I think that would work really well too!”

Spot felt his heart drop, like he had jumped off the balcony. “Jack,” his tone was bitter, “know what you’re talkin’ about before you try to tell us what to do, alright? Just because you’re dating someone doesn’t mean we all have to be.”

Race stopped working, frozen in place. 

“Race is my best friend,” Spot’s voice kept growing in volume, “but that doesn’t mean we’d ever date! Okay? Dating Race would be, I don’t know, it’d just be weird!”

“Why would it be weird?” Jack inquired. 

Spot threw a sheet he had pulled off of a chair, and it landed among the house seats. “Just keep your nose out of places it doesn’t belong, alright Kelly?” 

Jack watched as Spot stormed off, and listened as his feet hit the wooden stairs with thuds. He turned to look at Race, who shook his head in disbelief. 

“Really, Jack? You said you’d try to help. Is this helping?” Race shrugged angrily. “You fucked that up, Jack.”

Jack shook his head. “Go follow him, I’ll finish this up. You’re just gonna keep being angry at me, and you’re not gonna get any work done if you don’t talk to him.” 

“I wasn’t waiting for permission,” Race grumbled, but he let his feet carry him away from Jack, and out onto the dark street. He looked around, searching for the outline of a boy he knew a little too well. There he was, a lighter in his hand, sitting on the curb less than a block away. 

“Spot!” Race shouted, and he saw Spot’s head turn, then jolt away from him.  
Race ran up to him, and rested his hand on Spot’s shoulder. “Hey,” he greeted, and sat down. “Do you want to tell me what that was about? You know Jack was like, mostly kidding, right?”

Spot sighed. “I do now. I didn’t get it for a minute, and I just - I don’t know.”

“I get it. It was just a little much, wasn’t it?”

“I guess it was,” Spot put his hand on his cheek. 

“And,” Race let himself run his mouth. It was what he was best at, “would it really be so bad if we were to date? I mean, it wouldn’t be weird, would it? We’re close enough that it would be fine, I think. I don’t know, I just feel like-”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. We’re best friends, we’d be chill if we dated. But we’re best friends, y’know?”

Race let out a deep breath. “Christ, Spot.”

“What?” Spot turned his face toward his friend. 

“How dumb can you get?” Race leaned forward so that his hands were on his knees. 

Spot leaned forward to match Race’s posture. “What do you mean?”

“It’s nothing. Forget it. Let’s go back inside and keep helping Jack!”

“No, what is it?”

“I said,” Race began to stand up, “let’s forget it and go back inside. I’m freezing.”

“I want to know what you had to say, Race.”

“Fine!” he shouted. “Spot, you’re my best friend. And I just had to be, like, fucking in love with you, didn’t I? Jesus, it’s like every day I have to hold myself back from grabbing your face and kissing you because I’m just so terrified of what your face might look like when it’s over. And I don’t think I could handle it if you looked angry and I was the one that caused it. But listen, if you want to be friends, that’s fine,” his voice was a dry sob. “God knows I’ve gotten good at it. Let’s go inside, Spot.”

Spot had his head in his hands, and he didn’t move. 

“Spot?” Race asked, before settling. “Alright. If you’re not going back, I am. I’ll see you later, Spot.”

He was stopped from opening the door to the theater by a hand on his wrist. It pulled him back so that his face was centimeters away from Spot’s. Spot took a breath - a last second of courage if the look on his face was anything to go by, and kissed Race. The cold of the street suddenly didn’t seem quite so cold, and if Race thought that the street lights were brighter, he could have been wrong. He let his hands move up, reaching at the back of Spot’s head and feeling through his hair, pulling Spot’s face towards his own, and arching his entire body to press closer to Spot’s core. 

They finally breathed as they moved apart. Race was the first to laugh, his eyes crinkling at the edges. 

“See,” the yellow of a stoplight reflected in his blue eyes, “was that so weird?”

Spot shook his head. “No. Nothing weird about that.”

“Good. Do it again.”

The stars weren’t visible, but they didn’t need them in a neighborhood of a city that never sleeps, a city that was all theirs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!


End file.
